3-11-11 Tsunami

The tsunami was generated in Japan at around 8:25pm Thursday night (Hawaiian time) 3-10-11 this is when I was notified at our meeting. That would have been about 2-3pm Friday Japan time. There was a magnitude 8.9 earthquake which triggered a tsunami sending a 30' wall of mud into the Eastern shores of Japan. There was a discussion/report on CNBC on insurance in Japan that damage would be in the $800Billions US and that insurance would only cover about $5-7Billion. Government will certainly have to get involved here. I will re-confirm those numbers as the news updates them.
http://www.abc.net.au/news/events/japan-quake-2011/beforeafter.htm
http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/japan-tsunami-the-moment-it-hit/2011/03/13/ABvZGvT_video.html
It also sent a 6' wave all the way to the mainland US. On the way there, we got a 6' wave which touched our shores, but did minimal damage to Haleiwa. There was reported Damage to Kona Alii Dr. on the Big Island and to La Marianas and Keehi Lagoon on Sand Island. This article will address only known Haleiwa concerns. The ocean came up to our sea wall, but it did not come over it. Here are some pics of the pipe, tidal changes, the reef and a story about the Haleiwa Boat Harbor. All the pictures below were taken on Friday 3-11-11.











Here the post directly in font of our property is completely exposed due to the receding tide. The post is 40" long from the base of the sand.












Here the tide has made ripples in the sand while it receds. You can see the pipe fom the side completely exposed.












Here in the next few pictures, the water is rushing back out to sea in a raging torrent. The pipe is now completely covered. Time lapse 5 min 30 sec.













This picture is standing in front of our condo looking towards Kaiaka Beach Park.













Here the water is being sucked out through the channel












The water fronting the pipe went from raging river water to a smooth ocean without hardly a ripple.

















The tide went out exposing the entire reef to about 2-3' out of the water, then as the picture below shows, the water rushes back in to cover the reef in about 5 minutes. When I say rushing waters, I mean like it was a raging rapids coming back in and going back out. The whole cycle for draining, exposing the reef, then back in again took about 10-11 minutes.













Then the reef was completely exposed again.








The supporting joist on the ramp to the boat dock is falling








This part of the ramp was destroyed during the tidal surge. According to the Star-Advertiser this morning these docks were 'Tsunami resistant' docks which broke. The article goes on to say:

HALEIWA – The big wave never arrived. But a series of small and powerful surges – as many as 20 – pushed muddy water from the tsunami through the Haleiwa Boat Harbor early this morning.

When the water receded, some of the boats tied up in the inside basin were resting in mud. When the water rushed back, the boats rocked and rolled with the churn. On the fourth surge, portions of a floating dock buckled and snapped away from the embankment.

"Just a tremendous amount of water came in, and you could hear it," Paul Sensano, the harbormaster, said of the crumbling dock. "You could hear it crackling. Crack. Crack. Crack."

The floating dock, which is less expensive than a traditional concrete dock, was designed with a tsunami in mind. The dock is supposed to bend and not break. But it broke today, while an older concrete dock nearby survived intact.

With the advance warning about the tsunami last night, boat captains had plenty of time to assess whether to keep their vessels in the shelter of the harbor and hope for a ripple or go out to sea and avoid the potential impact zone.

Jim Davis took his boat the Lana-Kini named after his life long friend Don K. whose wife's name is Lana and his wife named Jeanie or Kini in Hawaiian out to sea leaving at about 11:30pm. Fred Chun also took the Lia C, a 32-foot fishing boat named for his daughter – his "bag of diamonds" – out to sea before the tsunami hit.

His slip on the floating dock was destroyed.

"If I didn't,`Oh, man,'" he said, looking at the damage this morning. "It would probably still be tied up, but I bet it would be pretty busted up."

Dave Borgman took the Foxy Lady, a 42-foot charter boat, out to sea. His slip was gone, too.

"If we would have been right there," he said, pointing to the empty spot, "we would have been screwed."

Daniel Aitchison was at the harbor last night to check on a friend's boat, the 35-foot Kini, and decided after consulting with his friend that it was probably better to leave it tied up loosely to the floating dock.

"We've come down to see that the dock is destroyed, and the piece where we're on is perfectly fine. You can't get luckier than that," he said, visualizing the stress on the dock and the boats that stayed in the harbor.

"She's sitting 100 percent perfect, so that's just unbelievable," he said.

At one point between the surges, Sensano, the harbormaster, called into KSSK to describe what he was witnessing after hearing accounts on the radio about minimal impact in other parts of the island. But he had to quickly get off the phone, he told the hosts, because water had jumped the embankment and was flowing under his office.

"I'll put it this way. The damage could have been greater," he said this morning. "But it was not. No vessels were lost. No lives were lost. So we're thankful for that much.

"Now we've got to just pick up, clean up, and move on." It was estimated that the damage to the Haleiwa docks would be upwards of $300,000. Here is a KHON-TV2 clip:
http://www.khon2.com/content/news/developingstories/story/Tsunami-caused-millions-of-dollars-in-damage-to/phnScX0Ct0ieFmHN2F2ZAQ.cspx

















We found this part of the docks floating off shore of Alii Beach heading to and eventually ending up at Kaiakas. You can click onto the pictures to enlarge them.